Underground
by Zamelot
Summary: Welcome to New Jersey where every person you glance at hates you and vice versa. Welcome to the lives of a small suburban band and their desperate search for a rhythm guitarist. Don't worry they hate you too.
1. I

Hi. I don't own the characters of School of Rock, but I do own my own character.

* * *

Within the house lingered a faint smell of cigarettes blended lightly with the sweet scent of vanilla icing. In some other room, the movie Annie was on just loud enough to be noticed. She led him shyly to a small, cluttered room filled with books, Victorian-like sofas, mini lamps, and framed pictures lining the walls. She offered him a seat and asked if he'd like a drink. Awkwardly, he refused and remained standing.

"I actually wanted to thank you for saving us a place last Thursday at the Stooges to play our show,"

She dropped her head and began eyeing the pictures on the walls. He was stunned to find himself starring at photos of a young teenager standing alongside and often embraced with people such as Jim Morrison, Robert Plant, Jimmy Paige, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joey Ramone.

"My mother was an insane groupie," she muttered smirking at the dumbfounded expression on his face. "She even snuck into the Beatles' hotel suite when she was 13 and walked in on George while he was taking a shower."

Zack chuckled. "Uh," he felt comfortable enough to ask her now. "I noticed before that that book you were reading when I last saw you… your bookmarker was a guitar pick. I was wondering if you played guitar."

Her face flushed red from the tips of her ears to the roots of her hair. She began fiddling with the frayed ends of the sleeves of her one size too big Corpse Bride jacket. Her eyes seemed to be everywhere else but on him.

"Just a little—just a little. Not—not much—I mean really. Not—not really. No,"

"Really?" he asked, crestfallen.

She chewed on her lower lip, and then released a heavy sigh. She motioned for him to follow and she took him up the spiral wooden staircase.

"Sorry about the Annie thing," she mumbled, glancing over the balcony. "My little sister loves that movie."  
She halted in front of a poster, picture, and newspaper clipping infested door. Posters of Led Zeppelin, the Doors, and HIM overlapped and were surrounded by newspaper clippings of the deaths of Joey, Johnny, and Dee Dee Ramone, which were overshadowed by what looked to be a younger version of herself posing with George Harrison, Angus Young, Joey Ramone, and Jimmy Paige.

She opened that curious door and Zack was suddenly drawn into a sort of gothic, yet very 'teenagerish' room. The dark walls were lined with mahogany shelves filled and bent with countless novels; movie posters of all the Dracula movies, Broadway plays, Tim Burton films, and several anime shows scattered the walls and ceiling, and about the black velvet like carpet: CDs, cassettes, DVDs, notebooks littered the floor.

"Sorry about the mess," she mumbled. She stepped toward the closet and withdrew from it a red and black Mosrite. "I learned to play a little. I can play simple melodies or pluck along with other guys… takes me a while, but… um, I can play the blues, too,"

"That's perfect," Zack looked up at her, then at the Ayashi no Ceres calendar hanging to the left of her open window. "That's fine. You're perfect. You're in. You can be—well, we were looking for a rhythm guitarist, and you'd fit in perfectly—if you're willing to wear a bit more color than black."

She giggled uncomfortably, and looked down at her black Hello Kitty socks. She wiggled her toes and fingered the bottom of her jacket. "That sounds like fun…"

She said softly after a short silence. "But there's one problem…"

Zack eyed her eagerly, waiting to fix any problem she turned up. A great gust of bone chilling wind gushed through the window moving aside the crimson colored curtains to reveal the gray, almost white sky. "Shoot,"

She lifted her gaze and blushed. "I can't read music,"

* * *

One of the ups of being from New Jersey are all the rock bands we have. The emo ones I could care less about, but the good rockin' ones are worth being from the state everyone ranks on. I don't think this story's gonna do all that great, but at least I'm having fun with it. If you're nice, could you leave a review? Mystery girl shall be revealed! when I feel like revealing her. 


	2. II

well, I rewrote it. I owe a lot of thanks to Nanners77 who gave mea lot of good advice. Hopefully this is better. And more understandable.

* * *

Chapter Two

Freddy glanced briefly into the hideously tacky mirror complete with multicolored feathers and tragically fake jewels that Zack's mother had picked up in an antique store but his father had managed to convince her to store in the basement. It seemed like it belonged more in a circus and looked so very out of place among the black leather couches, mahogany tables, and tall crystal lamps upstairs which, Zack claimed, was the result of his parents' constant visits to Bombay.

"I hate that girl," he muttered finally.

Zack rubbed both his eyes with the bottom of his palms and sighed. "Well, that's too bad," he responded, banging his heels against the washing machine upon which he sat, "because I already told her that she's in."

"You know, Zack," Katie interrupted, looking up from the bass she was desperately trying to tune in the dim light from the single bulb hanging from the low ceiling. "As much as I wanna find a rhythm guitarist too, I think that you should've ran it by us first before deciding she was it."

"Yeah!" Freddy interjected, his face flushing red with anger. "Beside—_I hate her!_" he repeated as if they hadn't heard him the first time.

Zack jumped down from the washing machine and pressed his fingers against his temples. Man, his head hurt. It was something of a sinus headache with the pain spreading from his ears and back teeth to his nose and head. He found it rather annoying that he was the only one in his family who obtained allergies at the beginning of winter. Instead of leaving him be, they smothered him with sympathy and affection, giving him more of a headache than with the allergies. "Look guys," the two must've heard the fatigue in his voice and felt bad for they listened attentively. "We've got three weeks before tryouts to see if we can open for that huge ring of big bands. So far we've got a zero out of a hundred chance of even being put on the polls. If we ever want our dream to come true, we've gotta jump at every chance we get and not wave at them as they pass us by."

Freddy snorted, half embarrassed by Zack's speech, but half feeling sorry for him. He decided that Zack spent too much time watching Disney movies with his younger sisters. He pulled on his bomber jacket, and then rubbed his clammy, sweating palms over his black jeans. "Okay, man…is she a good guitarist at least?"

Zack shrugged and watched as Katie moved to open the window. A cool breeze blew in through the plain curtains, chilling Zack as he only had on a black Pantera shirt and jeans. "She's…decent. Really slow, but at least she knows what she's doing…sort of…in a way. But she can't read music."

The patience Freddy had slowly managed to build up shattered into shards that scattered about the room. "Then why the hell did you tell her that she was in!" he shouted. He spun on his heel and darted up the stairs throwing the door open, then slamming it behind him. "I've got better things to do than baby-sit vampire obsessed, coffee addicted freshmen!" he added just as loudly as Katie opened the door again and tried to call him back.

He rounded the corner and charged into the foyer just as Summer came in. He all but knocked her off her feet, frantic to get out of that house. Notebooks, pens, and all the contents of Summer's purse spilled out and onto the floor without a second glance from Freddy or an offer of help.

"Thanks for the help, Freddy, but I've got it from here!" she yelled after him.

Katie chuckled as she moved to assist her friend. "Let 'im go burn off some steam," she returned the cosmetics that scattered the floor back into Summer's beige Santa imitation handbag. "He's just ticked about the guitarist Zack picked up."

Summer jerked her head up. "Zack found a guitarist?" she asked, excitement lighting up her green eyes.

Katie shrugged and got to her feet. "I guess you could put it that way,"

Summer raised her brow, gathering her books into her arms, and followed Katie toward the basement. "Oh, no. Who'd he get?"

"_Honey Bee_ Kostova," Katie laughed and began down the stairs.

Summer groaned "Kostova? Short? Black zip ups? Anne Rice under her arm? Have you slapped Zack yet?"

"He has funny ways of making you feel sorry for him,"

* * *

Freddy stared momentarily at a young Indian girl to the right of where he stood as he waited to get off the bus. Her long, straight black hair seemed to glow under the florescent light and her large, round brown eyes darted back and forth from him uneasily. Perhaps she wasn't used to being stared at.

She most likely wasn't from the way her hands twisted the red and orange skirt she had on.

He took one last look at her dark brown skin and aquiline nose before he hurried off behind a Mexican woman. He jumped down the last few steps (almost tripping) and braced himself as he left the warmth of the bus and was overcome by the bitter, biting chillness of the early winter. He almost immediately wished he'd worn an actual winter jacket.

Pulling the collar of his leather jacket up, he headed for Dewey and Ned's place, three blocks from where the bus dumped him. Cursing the weather under his breath, he made his way through Downtown Historical Lakewood with its 1930s lampposts, brick streets and sidewalks, and black metal and brown wood benches. The metal heels of his boots made an irritating clack each time it collided with the hard surface of the cobblestone floor.

It was twilight by the time he reached the apartment neighboring a Chinese take out restaurant with a flickering 'OPEN' neon sign. As soon as he rapped on the door, the 'O' on the sign to his right went out. There was a slight commotion inside which included someone tripping over a guitar and falling into a coffee table and knocking down a dozen beer bottles.

The area suddenly went silent save for some yapping dog and the shouting Chinese in their broken English. Just as Freddy was about to knock again, the door abruptly swung open. Dewey stood in the doorway, disheveled and half drunk in a raggedy 'Welcome to New Jersey…Now Go Home' shirt and Tazmanian Devil boxers. Freddy paused, about to make some snide remark about Dewey's choice of drawers, but held his tongue.

"Hey, what're you doing here?" Dewey asked squinting at him.

"Gee, man, it's great to see you too," Freddy briefly wondered if Dewey was at all cold and if he ever planned to invite him in.

"Whaddya want?"

"Oh, I'm doing fine. A little _cold_ but great. I'm glad you asked. How's life been treating ya?"

Dewey rolled his eyes and pushed his hair back from his eyes. It looked to Freddy as if he hadn't shaved in a week. "Okay, man, cut with the sarcasm. What's up?"

"I need to borrow fifty bucks," Dewey blanched. "I'll pay you back, man!" Freddy added before Dewey could protest. "I just need it to edit some stupid mistake Zack made."

"Oh?" Freddy looked to see Dewey's left eye twitching. "How'd fifty buck gonna fix Zack's mistake?"

"He picked some idiot to play rhythm guitar for the band. I need fifty to rent a room at the Stooges to hold try outs for guitarists to replace her."

Before answering, Dewey barked at his neighbors (who were growing steadily louder) to shut up. "Who'd Zack pick that was such a horrible choice?"

"Honey Bee Kostova."

"Kostova? Ah, the love child. Her ma, I think, is Arisu Kostova. She teaches the tai chi classes I go to," he paused at the look on Freddy's face. "Don't ask. But I reckon she's the kid that hid in your locker and screamed in your face; am I right?"

"You gonna give me the fifty or not?"  
Dewey sighed. "Aw, man! Can't you just be a teenager and ask your parent for money?"

Freddy started down the steps, hands in his pockets, cheeks red from the cold. Dewey banged his hand against the doorframe, frustrated at how he couldn't say 'no' to any of those suburban brats. He motioned for Freddy to wait, then hurried into the house an stole Ned's wallet off the key dispenser table, pulling a Grant out, then hurrying back to the door. He shoved the bill into Freddy's hand and gave him a cuff on the side of the head.  
"You better not be using that money on drugs," he warned. Freddy waved it off, grinning, then raced off to catch the taxi that was zooming down the street. Dewey slammed the door shut before returning to the living room to join Ned who was lounging across the couch watching the Dick van Dyke Show.

"What was that?"

Dewey collapsed on the sofa, picking up one of his many beer bottles. "Nothing. But Freddy owes you fifty bucks."

* * *

At this point in a story, it's very likely for the reader to assume. I please ask that you don't. 


End file.
